When a child is buried, their dreams, hopes and aspirations are placed in the casket with them. But their souls, and the dreams, hopes and aspirations their parents had for them remain here, with the living. Those dreams, hopes and aspirations rest on the shoulders of the children who remain or on those who are born after a tragedy. For those children there is a burden that they will carry, always: a desire to love their parents enough for two; please their parents enough for two; become enough for two. It is as if two children, two souls share the same body, forever.
I am a replacement child. When I think of parents burying a child, brothers and sisters losing a sibling, I want to tell them that life ebbs and flows with times of joy and sorrow and with intermittent, quiet, restful times; that each soul needs to recuperate, to adjust to the loss, waiting for the right time, to begin again, to dream again, to look outward with hope and renewal.
It wasn’t until I was in my fourth decade that I came to truly appreciate and internalize the meaning of coming into the world to replace another. I had known from a fairly young age that I was born after the death of the oldest son, Martin Arthur.
At two and a half he became ill. The family doctor was there at the house. And our mother and grandmother. And then the fire department, the police department, the ambulance. Our father was on his way home when Martin died.
I was born two years later, almost to the day. I came home to the same house and for all I know the same room. I never asked. We never talked about Martin. There were no pictures on display. But he was there.
When I think of Martin, I remember the picture that I found of my father, wearing his fedora, holding Martin close, a big smile on both faces. Martin was a beautiful boy; rosy chubby cheeks, a headful of dark wavy hair, dark mischievous eyes. He embodied joy. He was much loved. The picture had been taken in the winter. Probably a few weeks before his death.
I remember watching my mother over the years standing at the sink, looking out the window into the backyard, doing the dishes rhythmically; wet, wash, rinse onto the dish-rack. She was there, but not present. On sunny days we would go in the backyard and lie on the grass, eyes on the clouds, looking for shapes-an elephant, a bird, a face. It occurred to me later in life that mom wasn’t looking for shapes, she was looking for Martin.
Martin is in me. It wasn’t until I later in life that I became aware that I have been carrying his hopes and dreams and the hopes and dreams my parents had had for him and that I continue to carry the sorrow of my parents for the loss of their first born and he for them. His soul has taken up residence in my heart. Martin is for me a presence of an absence. It is possible to miss someone you never met.
As I write this I am remembering little moments that have left a large imprint. I was eight or nine. I was sick and threw up on of all places a basket of freshly laundered, pressed and folded clothes. I looked at my mother thinking uh-oh and she said, “It’s only clothing. It can be washed again.” I broke a dish. It was china. It slipped out of my hand as I was helping with the table. “It’s okay, it’s only a dish.” She knew what it meant to lose something priceless and it wasn’t things.
That is the gift my parents gave to me. Things have no intrinsic value. No import. I look around and realize that I am not a collector of things and have never been. I am now in my sixties and the experiences of my parents continue to affect me. I realize that I learned from them the simplest yet, for too many the most difficult lesson: we put our stamp on the world not by the quantity and quality of our possessions but how we value life.
